Love Contract | haobin

Twenty-Two

~ Earlier That Day ~

After Hanbin says goodbye to Yujin, he takes his car keys and walks out of the house. He feels like a coward for not being able to let Zhang Hao know how he truly feels. "Why did I have to say 'as a friend'?" He mumbles and sighs. He's always been really bad at confessing his feelings. He'd usually always be the one getting the confessions.

It's especially hard for him right now since he feels so confused. Does he really like Zhang Hao? They've known each other and have been married for almost a month, but in what moment did real feelings start getting involved?

He had to go work on a presentation with his classmates at the cafe today, but he knows he won't be able to concentrate. He starts driving to the cafe, but ends up pulling over. He decides to call his classmates and tells them he'll send them his part of the presentation later.

After that, he calls Gyuvin since he's his best friend and he really needs some advice right now. "Oh, hey Hanbin. What are you up to?"

"Hey, nothing much. Did you work today?"

"Yeah, I'm at the convenience store right now. Is something wrong?"

"I kind of wanted to talk to you about something. Do you have a minute?"

"Yeah, of course. It sounds important. If you want to meet up, I can always go out for a few minutes or you could wait until my shift ends."

"No, it's kind of too important to wait. I think a few minutes will be fine."

"Alright, so let me know when you get here. There's not too many customers right now. I'm sure Taerae could cover for me for a few minutes."

"Okay, I'm five minutes away. I'll let you know when I'm outside." Hanbin hangs up and starts driving towards the convenience store.

Once he's there, he texts Gyuvin that he's outside and Gyuvin comes rushing out of the store, then gets in the passengers seat. "What does my best friend need?"

"Wow, it didn't even take you half a minute."

"Well, it sounded like you needed to talk about something important, so I came as fast as I could. What's up?"

"I'm not really sure how you'll react to this..." Hanbin starts. "I know you're also Matthew's friend and now that we're on good terms, you had hope that we'd get back together... but these days, I've realized I don't have feelings for him anymore. I think I've started having feelings for Zhang Hao."

"Oh, tell me something I don't know."

"Huh?" Hanbin asks, confused. "What do you mean? You knew?"

"It's so obvious, Hanbin. Even Ricky and I were talking about it the other day at work. We were saying how your marriage seems so believable because you two probably like each other... especially you, though. You keep giving him the princess treatment and then use the excuse of 'oh, it's because they're all watching and they have to believe our marriage is real' and blah blah blah... But your reaction to the birthday present he got you was a little too genuine... especially when you were reading the letter in which who knows what he wrote to you... And then when you called him 'love'. Wow, I almost cried. I hadn't seen you this happy or in love since the break up, so it makes me a little emotional if I'm being honest."

"Wow, I didn't know I was being so obvious." Hanbin tells him. "I actually didn't realize I had feelings for him until last night."

"Really? Did something happen to finally make you admit your feelings?"

"Somehow my mom found out where I live, so she ended up going to my house right after you guys left. I was in the shower, so Zhang Hao ended up opening the door for her. I had never talked to him about her, so he wasn't aware I didn't have a good relationship with her. She went to ask him for money and claimed I haven't been giving her any and that she's been starving for days. She got really aggressive and started yelling at Zhang Hao and Yujin. She even tried to hit Hao."